Many electronic systems such as computers employ circuit boards with card-edge connectors and a "motherboard". The motherboard is a circuit board containing connectors which mate with the card-edge connectors, and also containing the interconnecting wires which run between the individual circuit boards in the system.
Typical electronic systems contain several circuit boards placed in a card cage containing guides along which each circuit board slides into the proper position for mating of the circuit board edge connector with the corresponding motherboard connector. Force is required to properly mate the circuit board with the motherboard in the card cage. This force is partially a function of how many pins are on the edge connector and the depth of each pin. Therefore as the number of pins increase, the amount of force to install and extract a circuit board into/from the card cage increases.
Through the advancement of connector technology circuit boards now typically contain approximately 80 pins per edge connector in a relatively small area. Therefore a substantial amount of force (e.g., 90 lbs) may be required to mate a circuit board connector with the motherboard connector. This force may be too great for the average individual to generate in order to install and extract the circuit board in the card cage. In addition, requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) limit the force to 95 pounds that any one person can be asked to exert. The installation and extraction force must be reduced to a reasonable level where an individual person can more easily install and extract each circuit board.
Lubrication of the pins is one way to reduce the installation and extraction force. However once the unlubricated pins have been inserted into the connector upon assembly thereof, the lubricant has to be applied to the pins uniformly; that is, the lubricant should only be applied to a certain percentage of the pin height while avoiding lubricant contact with the connector edges and the inside of the connector. This prevents the lubricant from coming into contact with the circuit board and degrading the conformal coating on the board. It is this uniform application of the lubricant which has been heretofore difficult to achieve.